Boundary
by Riarra
Summary: A gothorita goes on a journey to learn why the humans have disappeared, and a ghost tags along with him.


A lone gothorita made his way through a forest, shivering. The cold had been bearable earlier, but now the sun was setting and the relative warmth of daytime was fading. His feet were numb from their contact with the cold ground, and the chill made his bow-shaped antennae ache. The trees loomed over him in eerie silence, their branches lined with icicles, and the feeling that they were watching him only grew as time passed. He fiddled with the button on his satchel as he walked, eager to leave the woods behind. He pushed his way through a wall of frost-covered underbrush, and howling wind smacked him in the face. The earth dropped away a few feet from him.

Gothorita hugged himself in an attempt to keep the air from whisking his body heat away, crept closer to the edge of the gorge, and looked down. The rocky walls plunged downward at an incredibly steep angle to meet a wide, frozen river. There was another cliff on the far side of the ice, where his destination lay, but it looked as hopelessly far away as the horizon.

Gothorita scrambled back into the undergrowth for shelter from the remorseless wind. He sat down on the least-icy patch of ground he could find and fumbled with his bag. It was designed for human hands, not for stubby gothorita hands stiff with cold, but he managed to undo the fastening eventually.

"I'm sorry I can't help you with that." The transparent figure of a young human girl faded into view beside him.

"I'm sorry I don't have fingers," Gothorita said. "Neither of us can help it, though, so there's no use feeling bad about it." He pulled a slightly squashed, yellow-and-green berry from the satchel. He turned the fruit over in his hands, eyeing it with distaste.

"What's that?"

"An aspear berry," Gothorita said, tugging the berry's stem off and enlarging the resulting hole in the hard peel with his hands, "I'm freezing. Aspears help with that. It's a good thing they're growing all over this forest." He bit into the fruit, grimacing at the taste. "Too bad they're so sour."

The girl burst out laughing at his puckered face. "You look like Abra," she gasped out between fits of giggles, "when she tried to eat a whole lemon!"

Gothorita glared good-naturedly at her, his mouth still twisting around the tart lump of berry, which sent the girl into further peals of laughter. Shaking with mirth, she floated off the ground, tumbled backwards through the air, and vanished.

Normally when she disappeared, she faded away gradually. Worried, Gothorita closed his eyes and concentrated.

He could feel the quick minds of hunting dewgong and panicked basculin in the river below, and the scattered thoughts of a foraging delibird to the north. As he had suspected, he didn't sense the girl's peculiar, barely-detectable consciousness anywhere. Gothorita exhaled slowly, and allowed his mind to synchronize with the shifting, detached rhythms of the mysterious dream world.

He felt the dreaming minds of Pokémon surrounding him, anchored to their physical bodies, and a single mind drifting off into the depths of the realm of dreams. He drew himself closer and recognized the girl. He extended a single feeler of consciousness toward her.

_I'm close…_

The girl's fleeting thought brushed against Gothorita's mind. He struggled to hold on to it, trying to pull her back, but it slipped away from him.

Something was drawing her deeper. Gothorita pushed his panic down and concentrated, spreading his consciousness out in a thin net. It snagged on a few of the dreamers, flooding him with disjointed sensations of blood and grass and a heavy object crushing his tail.

Gothorita shook the sleeping minds free and stretched his mental web out wider. He could feel his connection to his body weakening. It was dangerous to expand himself this far, especially in the dream world; he risked losing his physical body forever and becoming nothing more than a dream.

The girl had suffered a similar fate. Her body died, but her mind had been trapped between the world of dreams and the physical world, and she could not move on to the realm of the dead.

Gothorita refused to let her be swallowed by the dream world. He felt her at the edge of his conscience and flung himself frantically in her direction, wrapping her within himself. He quickened his mind to the speed of the material world and yanked them both out of the domain of dreams.

He snapped back into his body with a jolt, and felt a surge of relief at his safe return. The girl pulled away from him and materialized a foot in the air, a vacant expression on her face.

"Are-are you okay?" Gothorita asked, his mouth feeling small and unfamiliar. He raised his hands to the bulbs on either side of his head, trying to shake the feeling that he had fingers and soft, shifting human hair.

The girl kicked her legs excitedly. "The pokémon!" she exclaimed, and floated downwards to look him in the eye. "Gothorita, she called to me! She wants me to go to the bridge!"

"What pokémon? What bridge?" Gothorita said, picking the aspear berry up from his lap.

"The pokémon I plucked the feather from! Cresselia!" The girl grabbed for his head, but her hands passed through him. "I'm so glad I made you pack the Lunar Wing, Gothorita! I'll finally see Mom and Dad and Abra again! Can you believe it?"

"Oh! That's great! It wants to meet you at a bridge?" Gothorita took a big bite of the aspear, hoping it would dispel the chill of the girl's touch.

"Yes!" She spun excitedly up through the treetops and reappeared in front of him. "It's somewhere to the south of here! Where's your map?"

Gothorita pulled an old book with a stained cover out of his satchel and opened it to a two-page map of Unova. He pointed to a spot between a large mountain and a river, swallowed hastily, and said, "We're here. The only bridge on this river is the Village Bridge, and that's to the north."

The girl hovered over him. "Well… the book is old. Maybe there was another bridge built after it was published, before the cold came."

"Are you sure Cresselia didn't mean a bridge on the river to the east?" Gothorita pointed. "There's two there—and one's south of us, technically."

"That might be it…" The girl frowned uncertainly. "But it felt like we were close, in the dream."

Gothorita looked up at her. "I guess we'll just follow this river south and look. If there's no bridge, we can head north and make our way east to the—" He squinted at the tiny, faded writing on the map. "—the 'Charizard Bridge,' then."

The girl beamed, and shot away. "Let's go, then! We're almost there!"

"Wait!" Gothorita shouted after her. "We can't travel at night! Dark-types come out to hunt, and I won't be able to fend them off. Besides, we've been walking all day. I need to rest and sleep, even if you don't."

The girl slowed. "Oh, yes, of course." She swung around. "It's just—I'm not sure how long Cresselia will wait, and—"

"If she wants her feather back, she'll have to wait a little longer." Gothorita wrapped his mind around a middling-size branch above him and wrenched at it. The branch snapped off with a loud _crack _that echoed through the forest. "Cresselia is an immortal legendary. She knows how to be patient."

"I guess so."

Gothorita kept his mental grip on the branch and walked to the base of the tree. He inhaled, focused, and drove the stick into the frozen ground at an angle so that its tip touched the trunk. He repeated the task with more branches to form a makeshift lean-to surrounding the tree.

"Okay," he said, surveying his work. He'd left a gap facing away from the wind where he could enter the lean-to, but there were still spaces between the sticks. "This isn't a very good shelter, but it's the best I can do. It should keep smaller pokémon out, at least."

"You're going to _sleep _in there?" The girl's brow furrowed. "I guess there's nowhere better around here, but… won't you freeze?"

"I think the aspear is starting to work, thankfully. I don't feel quite as cold now," Gothorita said. "But if you notice my breathing getting really slow, yell as loud as you need to wake me up." With that, he crawled into the lean-to and curled around the tree, shoving his bag as far away from the entrance as he could.

"Is it big enough?" the girl asked worriedly.

"Well, my head fits if I lay on my side. I'm fine. Don't worry."

"If you say so." The girl hovered over the shelter. _I can scare off any pokémon that come near, _she reassured herself._ I'm _good_ at being scary. I'm a ghost._

She felt Gothorita carefully touch her mind. _Only until tomorrow._

She smiled. _Sleep tight._

* * *

_Gothorita shoved the book of legends and the book about Unova into his bag. He looked around the library. There was nothing else he wanted to take. He headed up the stairs into the main room of the house. A sleeping litwick sat on top of a lamp, and its wick started to glow blue as he approached. He would have to do this quickly._

_He crept over to a table in the center of the room. He put his hands on the smooth wood and pushed a feeling of _goodbye, I'm leaving, I'll be safe _into it. His mother would find the psychic imprint in the morning, and hopefully she wouldn't be too worried about him._

_He turned to leave._

"_Are you going somewhere?" The girl popped into view._

"_Yes," he whispered. "I know Mama won't like it, but I just—I just want to see the world for myself, instead of only knowing how it is in the books. I want to know why humans aren't here anymore. I want answers that I can't find here."_

_The girl clasped her hands happily. "I thought so. The Lunar Wing is in my room. I want you to pack it. I'm going with you."_

"_Wait. I thought you couldn't leave the house." _

"_I can if I have an escort, a living person that I can attach myself to. I can't stay out forever, but I can leave. So go get the Wing. Please?" _

_For the first time in his life, he saw hope in her eyes. He couldn't refuse._

There was something strange about this dream, but Gothorita wasn't quite sure what it was.

_He was a young gothita, throwing bits of wood at the litwick in the library. They would incinerate the splinters with quick bursts of blue flame and scoot away, not looking for a fight. He kept at it, and eventually managed to hit one whose back had been turned. Its wick ignited suddenly, and the litwick charged._

_Gothita ran. He darted up the stairs and fled to the top floor where his mother was. He got halfway up the main staircase before he had to stop and catch his breath. The litwick was right behind him, its fire crackling. He scrambled up two more steps, panting, and collapsed. He could feel its heat on his back—_

_A sudden screech filled the air. He looked back to see the girl between him and the litwick, screaming wordlessly. The ghost-type's flame winked out with surprise, and the pokémon slipped back down the stairs to the library._

_Gothita found that he was trembling. The girl hovered over him, concerned._

"_Are you all right, little guy?" she asked. _

_He nodded. "Just scared. They've never chased me before."_

"_The litwick around here are pretty shy, but they do attack if they feel threatened. You don't really want to provoke them. When their flames are lit, it means they're feeding on your energy." The girl floated a little higher. "Let's get you back to your mama, okay?"_

_Gothita reluctantly started up the stairs. "Mama said I was old enough now to go to the book room on my own."_

"_Oh, did she?" The girl sounded surprised. "Well, then, do you want to go back?"_

_Gothita paused. "Not really…"_

_The girl smiled sympathetically. "I'm sure your mama will want to know what happened, in any case. Let's go. I'll tell her you were very brave."_

_Gothita nodded and resumed climbing._

The memory began to fade, and the sleeping Gothorita realized what was wrong.

_My dreams are never this vivid. I never dream in memories…_

He sensed a presence in his mind.

_I am sorry to disturb your dreaming. I merely wanted to know who you are._

His dream shifted to a vision of a bird-like pokémon surrounded by rainbows, its paws clasped to its chest.

_Are you… Cresselia?_

The pokémon bent her golden, crescent-shaped head towards him. _Yes._

_You've been looking through my memories?_

_Yes. And you have my gratitude for bringing the thief to meet me. I have waited for her for a long time._

_It _was_ you who trapped her here, right? Why?_

_Yes. My feathers are an extension of myself, and they must be freely given. She stole from me. It was… surprisingly violating. The theft weakened me, and the Lunar Wing protected her from dreams I sent. I felt helpless and angry, and when the thief died, I feared that my feather would never be returned. I was not thinking clearly. And so I kept her between the worlds. I thought I might be able to communicate with her once she had left her body, but something—or someone—always pulled her back when I tried, until today._

_It was cruel! She was a child, she didn't know any better! And you left her separated from her family for Dialga knows how long!_

_Perhaps it was cruel. But I do not regret my actions. They have brought her here, bearing the Lunar Wing. _The rainbows around Cresselia began to swirl, and she looked at him with piercing eyes. _You do not want her to leave._

_I want what's best for her! I've known her ever since I was hatched. She's been my only lasting friend for my entire life. Of course I'll miss her once she moves on, but I _do _want her to go. She's not happy as a ghost, and I want her to be with her family and be happy again. You will let her go, won't you?_

_I do not seek revenge. Once I have my feather back, she will be free to pass through to Giratina's realm. Do not fear, I will be waiting for the both of you._

Cresselia's presence left his mind, and Gothorita slipped into dreamless sleep.


End file.
